Showing events on this day in years past that shaped history... just, not our history.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

June 9, 721 – Umayyads take Toulouse

Following the defeat of King Roderic of the
Visigoths in 712, the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate had poured into Hispania and
begun to threaten expansion into Europe.From the new province of Al-Andalus, the Muslims began preparations to
launch conquest of the land to the northeast, Aquitaine.A former vassal state of under the Franks,
Aquitaine was ruled by Duke Odo from its most powerful city, Toulouse.Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani amassed an army
in Andalus and marched in 721 to besiege Toulouse.Odo escaped ahead the Muslim army and went into
the kingdom of the Franks, asking for help from Charles Martel, the Mayor of
the Palace and effective ruler for the Merovingian king Theoderic IV.Martel chose
to wait before offering Frankish military support, which was tied up in war
with the Saxons.

Odo returned to Toulouse with what army he could
muster.The city’s walls had remained impregnable,
but supplies had run so low that leaders were preparing to surrender.While seeing Duke Odo flee and managing an easy
siege tempted the army to become soft, Al-Samh determined to keep his scouting
parties sharp.They spotted Odo’s army
as it approached, and the besieging army raced to change ranks for a battle.Odo attempted to envelop his enemy, but the
Muslims stood, and the Christian army crumbled.As Odo’s retreat began, the Muslims returned to besiege the city,
prompting Toulouse to fall.Al-Samh
installed a guard and took up pursuit of Odo, who led him into Frankish lands
after another defeat in Poitiers.Martel
balked and tried to disengage his armies from the Saxons, but the result only
weakened his hold on Bavaria.Al-Samh
continued to march until he caught up with Odo, destroying him in the battle of
Tours.Keeping up the military momentum,
Al-Samh marched on Orleans, where he met and defeated Charles Martel, and soon
took Paris.

Having conquered the Franks, Al-Samh fell to
stabilizing his political control.He
allowed the German dependencies greater self-rule while encouraging them to
join Islam, which many of the surviving upper class of Western Europe did.Marginal religious tolerance kept the kingdom
from revolting, though Rome lost significant power without the Frankish support.As Muslim raids intensified in Italy, Pope
Gregory II was forced to capitulate to Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian’s
iconoclasm, which had prompted violent revolts.The Muslims battled the Byzantines for decades over the Italian
peninsula before finally adding it to the Caliphate.After 800, the Byzantines were a limited
power in Europe, gradually declining until it fell to the Seljuq Empire of the
Sunni Muslims in 1095.

Meanwhile, the Western Muslims faced incursion by
the Magyar, who had migrated out of Central Asia, and the Vikings of the
North.Both groups would eventually be
converted to Islam, which became the dominant religion in Europe with a
minority of Christians and Jews.Mongol
invasions threatened Europe centuries later, but they would eventually be
rebuffed, and order restored.The major east-west
trade routes of the world kept major historical focus on sea travel through the
Mediterranean and the land route known as the Great Silk Road.Trade also brought the Black Death in the
1300s, which left to a surplus of tradable goods for the rebuilding of world
population.Islamic merchant ships
explored southwest of Asia, coming into contact with Aborigines and
Polynesians, who expanded trade knowledge through the Pacific Ocean.

Eventually, explorers reached the New World by
island-hopping to the west coast of the New World, coming first into contact
with the expansive Incan Empire.Later
exploration across the Atlantic outlined the East Coast, though it would be
centuries before explorers had charted the mysterious interior.Islam spread among the new nations as lands
were gradually conquered, empires fell, and new ones arose.Coal as an energy source made European states
particularly powerful until petroleum showed more promise, which restored world
economic attention to the Middle East in addition to the religious qibla
toward Mecca during salah.

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In reality, the army under Al-Samh had let down its
defenses, and Odo destroyed the Muslim army with an encircling maneuver.A new army marched on Aquitaine in 732 under Abdul
Rahman Al Ghafiqi and proved unstoppable until defeated by Charles Martel
between Tours and Poitiers.Martel had dedicated
the years after Toulouse assembling a massive fulltime army, building the
foundations for Feudalism as he worked to feed
his creation and exercising temporal power as he seized church property to fund
it.His son Pepin overthrew the
Merovingian king with the Pope’s approval, and his grandson Charlemagne established
a massive empire in Western Europe.